WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress will not allow President Donald Trump to risk US national security and give up Washington's allies by unilaterally withdrawing from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the head of the House Intelligence Committee said.

"If Trump does not realize that NATO is the most successful security alliance in history, I do not know what can convince it," Sen. Schiff said in a tweet on Twitter.

According to a report by the New York Times, senior US administration officials said President Trump last year captured some of his aides as saying he wanted to withdraw from NATO because he saw no benefit to the alliance and saw it as a drain on the United States.

NATO spending
Former and current US officials fear Trump may repeat his threat to withdraw from NATO as the defense spending continues to exceed the levels set by the US president.

Trump launched a sharp attack last year on allies in NATO, especially Germany, accusing them of not paying a share of the Alliance's budget commensurate with the size of their economies, and talked about the contribution of America to the costs of NATO by 90%.

After a summit of NATO leaders held in Brussels last summer, Trump told senior officials in his national security team that he saw no benefit for the alliance, which was founded in 1949.

Commenting on Trump's threat to withdraw from NATO, Michel Flornoy, assistant secretary of defense under Barack Obama, said the decision would be one of the most disastrous decisions a president can take toward US interests. "The withdrawal of Washington from NATO will be the greatest success that the Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The former NATO Supreme Commander, retired US admiral James Stefredes, said America's withdrawal from NATO would be a strategic mistake, and that just discussing the idea of ​​withdrawal was Putin's gift of the century.

US national security officials believe that Russia has largely focused on undermining solidarity between America and Europe after Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimea in 2014 and that Russia's goal is to weaken NATO, which it sees as a threat to its national security.